Tips and trick for conserving power with iOS7

Although a few of its features got quite a rubbing from the fans and the tech community at large (we’re looking at you, nausea-inducing parallax and all-too-hackable iTouch sensor), there already seems to be a consensus that, holistically speaking, iOS7 is a good step forward for Apple’s mobile division, and does little to disappoint the devoted fan base (taking notes yet, Microsoft?).

Still, the most common and enduring among the concerns remains the short battery life span of a phone that runs on iOS7. The operating system is filled with new and exciting features, but all of them sure require quite a bit of energy to keep running, causing most users to completely opt-out of most of them unless entirely necessary. Here are some of the ways you can tackle this issue:

Let’s shortly go over the basics. If you don’t use your phone as an alarm and aren’t expecting any late night calls, you might want to turn off your phone while sleeping. If you’re not using bluetooth and Wi-Fi, make sure they are disabled. If you can live without Siri, turn her off entirely. Reducing brightness (via Control Center) is another easy way of saving power, as is disabling vibrations on your phone. Still, there are a couple of less common methods you may want to consider as well.

First, kill the AirDrop app. It’s a great way to share your files with your friends and family, but if you leave it in ‘discoverable’ mode, it’s going to make your battery its slave. You can easily disable it via Control Center.

Next, although it may be useful to have several apps running in the background, (you know, just in case?) this is almost the same as keeping them entirely active, at least relative to the power the apps consume. Go to Settings-General-Background App Refresh and control which apps are on or are updating data at all times. And speaking of updates, iOS7 lets your apps automatically update whenever such update is available. Disable this feature by going to Settings-iTunes&App Store, and gain some extra battery life as well.

Furthermore, the parallax motion may not cause you nausea after all, but it does largely consume your battery, and so do the animated wallpapers. Opt for a static wallpaper instead, and you can slightly diminish the battery drain.

Finally, many apps have access to your location data, which is both potentially scary and often unnecessary. Control this feature to preserve power as well, by disabling it at Settings-Privacy-Location Services.